well replace intuitive with cohesive and consistent etc... do you agree with the gist of it then?
I so wish I had the skills that is described there, I have an enormous amount of respect for those who are able to get it right (I don't agree that you *can't* learn them), and desperately try to learn more myself, and practice... I think you could stretch user interface to include major apis, if you kind of tilt your head a bit... but still, I think its really the most important thing today. On May 27, 12:26 pm, Mark Hibberd <[email protected]> wrote: > I have to say I disagree with it, mainly the phrase "intuitive > well-designed user interface". The idea that a human interacting with > a piece of plastic and silicon can be intuitive is crazy. 'Intuitive' > is extremely skewed towards individual skills and preference. I think > he means 'aesthetic', but I could be making that up. > > Given my position that it is impossible to be intuitive, I think it is > more important that whatever you use be cohesive and consistent, and > more importantly that your skills 'compound'. That is, understanding > or getting better at one part of a system will improve your skills > across the board. > > As far as I am concerned, Windows and OS-X both fail miserably at > this, (although, I don't really use linux either, mainly for reasons > of code quality, UNIX all the way!). In terms of my productivity and > evolving my skills, I find that I am held back when using either. This > is based on having to use OSX for work for the past 12 months, and my > memory of Windows (it has been a while though). I won't be going back > to either anytime soon. > > Again I must clarify that this is entirely dependent on my skills and > preference for how things work. > > On a side not, I do love this priceless vista quote which provides > some cannon fodder. > > "It’s easy to ridicule the estimated 2006-or-2007 ship date for > Longhorn, the next major release of Windows. But do you doubt for a > moment that Longhorn will provide more improvements from Windows XP > than desktop Linux will gain during the same period?" > > I don't think that one panned out, given what ubuntu, the vista of > linux, achieved in that same period. > > Mark. > > On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Michael Neale <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > I think this still rings true today, but its not linux specific, nor > > open source specific: > >http://daringfireball.net/2004/04/spray_on_usability > > > Some choice quotes: > > > "This idea, that the hard work of development is in building the > > underlying foundation, and that the easy part is writing a “GUI > > wrapper”, has been the Linux/Unix way all along." > > > "UI development is the hard part. And it’s not the last step, it’s the > > first step. In my estimation, the difference between: > > > * software that performs function X; and > > * software that performs function X, with an intuitive well- > > designed user interface > > > isn’t just a little bit of extra work. It’s not even twice the work. > > It’s an entire order of magnitude more work. Developing software with > > a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work." > > > The layering and separation that was encouraged (and still is by ill > > advised people) in java apps means this applies here as well. The term > > "user interface layer" often implied some trivial detail that junior > > devs would do. > > > Interesting.... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
